Quality Assurance in Service Procurement --- Total Quality and Total Quality Management refer to popular management philosophies in organizations these days. The purchasing department has an important part in the strive for organizational quality as several studies show corporate spend is significant and increasing. In this master thesis I study the actions companies take to ensure quality in service procurement. I argue that managing quality when sourcing services is particularly tricky, because of the special characteristics that belong to services. The purpose of the study is to examine whether different actions are taken to ensure the quality of different kinds of services.

Vattenfall Heat Uppsala runs the waste incineration plant in Uppsala, which produces district heating, process steam, district cooling and electricity. Vattenfall Heat Uppsala has decided to introduce an energy management system with the aim to increase the energy efficiency of the plant. The basis in such a system is to make an energy mapping.In this thesis an energy mapping has been performed at the waste incineration plant with the aim to identify and determine the size of energy flows. The investigated energy flows are used fuel, produced and used steam, produced district heating and cooling. Also the use of electricity to run the processes has been investigated.

Alien plants that have intentionally been introduced to an area for cultivation in public or private gardens constitute the primary pathway of introduction for invasive alien species that spread into nature. Garden owners want species that have satisfying characteristics, these characteristics are often also linked to plant invasiveness. Thus, the horticulture industry plays an important role by making scientifically based decisions and phasing out invasive plants and replacing them with alternative species with satisfying characteristics, but low risks of becoming invasive. This thesis aimed to examine the sale of and the attitudes towards alien plants in the horticulture industry in Sweden. Alien terrestrial plants identified to have a severe risk, high risk or potentially high risk of spreading and becoming invasive according to ArtDatabankens assessment, were examined to see if they were for sale.

One important issue faced by companies is to secure their information and resources from intrusions. For accessing a resource almost every system uses the approach of assigning a unique username and a password to all legitimate users. This approach has a major drawback. If an intruder gets the above information then he can become a big threat for the company and its resources. To strengthen the computer security there are several biometric methods for identity verification which are based on the human body?s unique characteristics and behavior including fingerprints, face recognition, retina scan and signatures.

To explore how children use dialect, and whether the dialectal language develops during growth might be of interest from a speech language pathologist?s point of view as the dialect could influence the child?s speech. Previous research is often based on older material and/or examines the speech of adults.  In the present study, everyday language in groups of south- eastern Swedish speaking children was investigated. The aim of the present study was to examine to what extent typically developed children of the ages of  5, 8 and 11 years use dialectal language. A further purpose was to discover which dialectal characteristics that were present in the different age groups, and how they differed.

This thesis is based on a case study for the real estate manager Mimer in Västerås. Mimer provides a great deal of this city?s rental apartments. Many of their buildings have ventilation systems with a type of heat-recovery called ?heatpipe?.

In a sustainable society the use of renewable energy and recycling of materials is of high importance. Wastewater treatment plants use large amounts of energy in the processing of wastewater. This study seeks to evaluate wastewater as an energy resource and to examine treatment plants potential to become sustainable energy producers. The study is based upon the internal processes of Himmerfja?rdsverket.

This project operate an environmental assessment of total waste was conducted by using a life cycle assessment (LCA), that examines the environmental benefits of recycling production waste from Atlas Copco at Stena recycling. Atlas Copco is a company engaged in the development and production of rig-mounted hydraulic breakers and handheld air breakers and handheld motorized rotisserie. Stena recycling is a recycling company engaged in recycling, processing and refining of metals, paper, electronics waste and hazardous waste.The purpose of this study is to focus on Stena customer Atlas Copco and evaluate environmental benefits between to recycle and not to do it. The result shows that the total energy gain, resulting from the recycling of waste fractions, lands at 6 990 089 MJ, corresponding to drive 3 times around the Equator with a truck (40 t). The result shows that recycling 3040 kg paper provides an energy gain of (38 600 MJ) compared with burning paper (19 500 MJ) is 19 100 MJ, which corresponds to heat a house for 11 weeks.

This thesis is a survey and also an investigation of the different factors that affects the cracking that occurs in the inserts at AB Sandvik Coromants production in Gimo. The work that has been done has focused on two main factors, namely, powder characteristics and pressing parameters.AB Sandvik Coromant produces tools and tooling systems for metal cutting. They have some problems in their production of inserts. The problem is that cracks sometimes occur in the body of the insert, after it´s pressed. In order to investigate this, a preliminary study was made in which production principles were studied.

Grubbe Ventilation AB is a sheet metal and ventilation company who provides design, installation, service, and repair of ventilation. The company is expanding their business by building a new facility in Umeå, Västerbotten. The property is designed to be used for both office and industrial work.Grubbe Ventelation AB has not yet decided upon wish system which is to be established to provide the building with heating and cooling. The consulting firm Umeå Projekt Team has therefore been asked to investigate the possibilities to invest in geothermal- heating and cooling.If the investigation of a geothermal heating- and cooling system would provide favorable results it would be a very appropriate alternative that provides energy at low costs and are an environmentally friendly option as the energy comes from stored solar energy in the ground is provided by stored solar energy in the ground.The facility ´s heating and cooling consumptions are calculated in the program BV2 and the result indicate a heating demand of 185 000 kWh per year due to thermal transmittance, transmission losses, heating of warm water and a cooling requirement of 5500 kWh.Three different systems of geothermal heating and cooling were tested in the computer program Energy Earth Design. The results show no difference in the dimensioning of the drill hole if merely heating were to be used or both heating and cooling were to be established.

Idag ställs stora krav på företag att vara miljömedvetna och resurseffektiva i sin verksamhet. Vid mjukpapperstillverkning används stora energimängder och inom industrin har det under många år funnits en strävan att energieffektivisera processer och att tillvarata spillenergi, bland annat genom värmeåtervinning. Valmet Tissue Technology Center i Karlstad har idag en pilotmaskinen utan värmeåtervinningssystem. Den här undersökningen gjordes i syfte att ta reda på hur stor återvinningspotentialen är för värmeväxling i pilotmaskinens torkpartier, bestående av Yankeekåpan och TAD-cylindrarna. Tre maskinkoncept undersöktes: DCT®, NTT? och TAD.

Today's young people find themselves in an intense media traffic where many messages have a commercial nature. Some such messages are for example different types of advertising in various media and advertising often plays on the uncertainty that may be common in adoles-cence. New interactive media like blogs on the Internet has been established in recent years. Mixed types of media content, advertising with different messages, appear in blogs. Therefore, I am interested in how blogs on the Internet can influence young people's creation of their identity.

Solar energy is the one most talked about among energy sources due to its huge potential amongst renewable energy technologies. A greater use of the solar energy may be the solution to today's climate threats. Normally there are two different types of solar technologies, solar cells and solar thermal collectors. Solar cells convert solar energy in to electricity whilst solar thermal collectors convert solar energy into heat, which can be used to heat hot water for households. This goal of this study has been to investigate the possibility of implementing solar energy into the energy system of Kista Galleria, one of Sweden's foremost venues.

This paper is about the new programming language from Microsoft, C# (See Sharp) and the .NET Framework. They are still in beta-version, but will be released on the market in February 2002. This paper presents C#, not in detail but the characteristics that distinguish the language. A comparison is done with C++ and Java, since C# is most resembling to these languages. Both C# and Java have been developed from the mother- language C++.

In Sweden, a big part of the energy use is used in the housing sector. Political goals and targets are set up which the housing sector needs to work towards. Apartment buildings are a major part of the housing sector in Sweden and therefore reduction of energy use in these kinds of buildings are key to lower the energy use in Sweden. But there are not only political incentives to reduce the energy use. Some energy?saving measures are directly profitable and should thus be performed.